Troy Aikman Addresses His 'Take the Dresses off' Comment During Monday Night Football

Troy Aikman took some heat for the comments he made during the Monday Night Football game between the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs. Right before halftime, Aikman expressed his frustration with a controversial roughing-the-passer penalty and said, "I hope that the competition committee looks at this during the set of meetings and we take the dresses off." The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback later talked about the comments on 1310 the Ticket in Dallas and admitted he made a "dumb" comment. 

"Yeah, I mean, my comments were dumb. Just shouldn't have made them, just dumb remarks on my part," Aikman said, per Dallas Morning News (via Yahoo Sports). Aikman, who is in his first season calling Monday Night Football games with Joe Buck, went on to talk about the penalty on Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones who sacked Raiders quarterback Derek Carr. 

"But the other part of ... what came from that, what I said was that it implied that I'm not in favor of protecting the quarterbacks, which could not be further from the truth," Aikman said on the radio. "I'm totally in favor of the protection that the quarterbacks are afforded, and all players for that matter. But there's no question there has been over-enforcement of the protection for quarterbacks … It's a thankless job that [officials are] in, and I don't fault the officials so much."

The penalty was controversial because Jones sacked Carr while he had the ball in his hands. In fact, Jones stripped the ball away from Carr to create a turnover. Referee Carl Cheffers spoke to pool reporter Adam Teicher about the play and explained why a penalty was called.

"The quarterback is in the pocket, and he's in a passing posture," Cheffers said. "He gets full protection of all the aspects of what we give the quarterback in the passing posture. So, when he was tackled, my ruling was the defending landed on him with full body weight. The quarterback is protected from being tackled with full body weight. My ruling was roughing the passer for that reason." The Chiefs won the game 30-29 but had the team lost, that play would have been magnified more and fans would have likely demanded the NFL change its rules. 

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